Top iOS apps and games of the week #8

Choose between siding with the zombies or humans, embark on an epic snowboarding adventure and race spaceships across air highways in our roundup of the top new iOS games. We’ve also shortlisted a loaded app for storm junkies and IFTTT’s new trio of ‘Do’ automation apps.

Apps

Tapbots, the makers of Tweetbot, have relaunched their calculator app Calcbot in a new avatar. The updated app has been redesigned for iOS 8, and integrates the Converterbot app as an in-app purchase. The app features a new favourites system, conversions with over 500 units across 22 categories, instant access to constants like Pi, Atomic Mass and more, and a choice of nine themes. Additionally, it syncs across iOS devices and with the Calcbot for Mac app.

There’s no dearth of weather apps on the App Store, but for serious weather junkies, Storm by Weather Underground is a must-have. It features a high-resolution radar that displays animations of past, present and future storm activity. You can also track storms, customise alerts for various types of weather activity, add customisable data layers and get current, daily and hourly weather forecasts.

Popular web automation service IFTTT has been renamed to IF, and has simultaneously launched a trio of apps under its new ‘Do’ series. Do Buttonlets you create a personalised button to perform a recipe with a simple tap. You can add up to three recipes and swipe between them. Do Cameradoes the same with your camera, connecting it with channels such as Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox and more. Do Noteon the other hand let you connect your notepad to Twitter, Google Calendar and other channels.

Games

AG Drive is a gorgeous racing game with a critical twist – instead of driving on asphalt, you’ll race to the finish line on anti-gravity spaceships. The game features various types of ships and tracks with aerial views of the Earth of the future. You’ll have a choice between Main and Quick events, Single Race, Time Trial, Elimination, Cup, Speed Record and Duel game modes, and air highways with various settings such as sunny, sunset, night and more.

A gorgeous endless runner, Alto’s Adventure follows Alto and his friends as they embark on an epic snowboarding journey. With its physics-based gameplay, the game features dynamic lighting and weather effects like thunderstorms, blizzards, fog, rainbows and shooting stars, with terrain that changes like it would in real life. There are 180 goals to accomplish, six unique snowboarders to discover, and combos you can chain together to maximise your points and speed.

In this sequel to Swap Heroes, you’ll find the same strategy adventure gameplay, where you’ll have to guide a group of heroes across various quests until they reach the final boss battle with the Shadow Knight. You’ll be able to form a squad of eight heroes, guide them across 10 new locations, and battle against 30 types of enemies. As you progress, you’ll get to unlock levels, modes and heroes, earn star points, and compete for high scores in the new endless mode.

In this multiplayer online game, you’ll have two choices ­– take control of the zombies and destroy the earth, or join the last surviving humans to eliminate the undead menace. If you choose the zombies, you’ll be able to spawn zombie drones or mutate them to become more powerful, using them to attack cities. On the human side, you’ll have to strategically place units around the cities, defend citizens and destroy attacking zombies. The game features a huge open world you can explore, 50 single player missions, and multiplayer challenges, guilds and player vs player combat.